The researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have created a composite mug shot of what God looks like -- based on the opinions of more than 500 American Christians surveyed.

The team determined political views shaped how respondents view The Almighty.

"Americans generally see God as young, Caucasian, and loving, but perceptions vary by believers' political ideology and physical appearance," researchers concluded. "Liberals see God as relatively more feminine, more African American, and more loving than conservatives, who see God as older, more intelligent, and more powerful."

The study's lead author, Joshua Conrad Jackson, said in a synopsis that "these biases might have stemmed from the type of societies that liberals and conservatives want."

However, all participants see God as similar to themselves on attractiveness, age, and, to a lesser extent, race, the study concluded.

"These differences are consistent with past research showing that people's views of God are shaped by their group-based motivations and cognitive biases. Our results also speak to the broad scope of religious differences: even people of the same nationality and the same faith appear to think differently about God's appearance."

Participants in the study viewed hundreds of randomly varying face-pairs and selected which face from each pair appeared more like how they imagined God to look.